Droid Engineer Archive

(This post has been crossposted to the SWGDiscussion Board, but I wanted you to loos at ity. If you feel the desire to respond, please goto the origional post http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=Development&message.id=352663

The Problem

There is a serious issue regarding Bounty Hunters and Droid Engineers. That issue is the Seeker Droid. Seeker Droids are those little floating droids that Bounty Hunters use to track down the location of their “mark.” They are a disposable droid, meaning that once they are used they are lost forever. To compound this issue, they are ogten not successful at their mission, and are lost without giving the Bounty Hunter any useful information.
The biggest problem with these droids is fairly simple. They use 172 resources to produce and require a Master Artisan and a Droid Engineer at Blueprints 1 to construct. Now, using the bazaar average of 5 credits per resource, they would cost 860 credits to produce. Using harvesters is certainly cheaper to procure the materials, but the question remains: Why sell seekers for less then we can sell the raw resources on the bazaar? Extrapolate from this that Droid Engineers would like to turn a profit, and you have a situation where seekers should cost around 1-2k each to purchase.
Now, we look at this from a Bounty Hunter’s perspective. These super dedicated people have given up most of their skill points to become Bounty Hunters. They are strong, fast, and quick in combat. They are crafty hunters that track moving targets. And, for the moment, they are broken.
A typical low level (Investigations 1) Bounty Hunter mission takes many Seekers to complete. I’ve heard as many as 10 or 11, but I know of Bounty Hunters that manage with 5-7 Seekers per mission. Bounty Hunter missions at that level seem to average around 6-8k credits for mission pay… See the problem yet? Let’s work out the details.

Number needed Old Droid Vendor Droid Engineer

Seeker = 7 x200 = 1400 x1000 = 7000
Probe Droid (assume 1) x1000 = 1000 x3000 = 3000
Average travel costs 1500 1500

Totals 3900 credits 11,500 credits
Profit from a 7k mission 3100 credits -4500 credits

As you can see, being a Bounty Hunter beyond Novice (needing droids) means loosing money… and not just a little bit of it. It’s a wonder that people are still dedicated to the Bounty Hunter profession at all. But that aside, I would also expect that the pay goes up and the need for droids either stays the same or goes down a little while traveling up the Investigation tree. None the less, this is by far a difficult thing to overcome if things do not change.
Droid Engineers wanted the Droid Vendor removed, which the development team did. And that is a wonderful way to boost the economy, since Seekers can now ONLY be found in the crafting stations of Droid Engineers. But, because they are so costly to make, and Bounty Hunters need so many of them, this is not an organized way to fix the broken economic issue.

The Solution

The answer is simple enough and can take any number of forms.

--> Make Seekers cheaper to produce, by removing the Master Artisan components from their construction. This reduces the resource load to only 100 resources and removes the multi-class dependency. This dependency is fine and acceptable when dealing with larger and more persistent droids, but not for a disposable one.
--> Increase Bounty Hunter mission pay. Now, before anyone starts flaming about this, consider that a “hunter” or standard “mission runner” can make CONSIDERABLE amounts of money doing their missions, even after the patch. What this increase does is several folded. First, it makes it more profitable to BE a Bounty Hunter and compensate for being forced into spending all of their skill points into the profession. This increase would also promote smart play over poor play. A crafty Bounty Hunter that can reduce his dependency on droids would be able to effectively give himself a raise in pay (or herself for the politically correct), while the Bounty Hunter that goes into a mission guns blazing may find that he is still loosing money.
--> Leave Seekers as they are (for construction) but make them ‘charge based.’ By giving Seekers experimental charges, this means that the Droid Engineer who takes the time to experiment with materials and one that goes higher in the experimentation tree of their profession will produce superior droids (read: more charges). If a Seeker had 10 charges on it at the Droid Vendor price of 200 per charge, that effectively makes the 2k cost to the Bounty Hunter worth while.
--> Probably my least favorite solution, because it actually hinders the economic nature of the game is to lower the Bounty Hunter’s need for Seekers and/or make them more effective. If Bounty Hunters do not need as many of these droids then it would increase their chances of making a profit doing missions. But because Droid Engineers are in need of MORE sales, not less, I would dissuade from using this solution. It is included here for completeness.

Yes, this is a long post. But I’m hoping to get someone in the development team to recognize this as a major need of the community. This issue affects 2 classes, both of which are in trouble right now. This would also address issues that would increase the player bases desire to play these classes, and would fix one of the problems within both in a single stroke.

Frankly, you just need to look harder for more reasonably priced droids. The prices I've finally determined to use, if enough BH buy them, will be much less than what you have posted. BH on Chilastra, for example, are getting probe droids for between 1k and 1.5k from everything I've heard.

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Aelorean wrote:

Frankly, you just need to look harder for more reasonably priced droids. The prices I've finally determined to use, if enough BH buy them, will be much less than what you have posted. BH on Chilastra, for example, are getting probe droids for between 1k and 1.5k from everything I've heard.

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I'm sure that not all the BH's are the same, but I've seen enough flak from them since the patch to say 'to hell with them' and make them pay

Its not DE's fault that BH missions dont pay out enough - but as far as I'm concerned thats a issue they and their correspondant need to take up with the devs (although I do appreciate that they get as much, if not less, dev-time as DE's do)

DE'shad an issue (unfair competition with an NPC vendor - the only NPC vendor in the game) and it got fixed,DE's shouldnt have to now worry about fixing their problems, DE's still have enough of their own thank you very much

Uhmm..Dormex, even if droids were only 1/2 as much as what you posted the equation would be something like: 7 seekers for 3,500 + 1 probe at 1,500 + travel at 1,500 = 6,500. (granted, 500 for seekers is probably not going to happen)

Personally, I was thinking that around 800-900 for seekers and around 1200 for probes would be reasonable considering the bulk amount that will be bought. Using that equation, your mission scenario would be

7 seekers for 6,300 + 1 probe at 1,200 + travel at 1,500 = 9,000

Personally, I think that a 2k loss for exp is acceptable, especially for an elite profession. Do you want to find out ANY idea how much money the droid engineers have lost grinding xp?! I didn't even think that you could make money on SWG until I got blueprints/production 4...I was barely making enough to keep harvesters running, let alone buy anything fun!

I think you guys should give it a few days for DEs to figure out how much they can sell those things for and I think you'll be able to find them for sale for a reasonable amount. Heck, I am even willing to sell at basically the old vendor price for those that are willing to buy 50-100 at a time.

I for one fell the pain of the bounty hunters so i sell seekers for 300 and probes for 600 yeah i really dont make a profit but /shrug i still do ok for myself

Ikabod

Droid Engineer

Naritus

Well from what I read of a different BH's thread is if BH's would quit skipping the investigation part of their skill tree they could use these droids more than once.

HINT: Novice BH's are not supposed to be the same as Master BH's. So get over it you don't get to Novice and have all your BH's skills that you will need. So quit being lazy and trying to bypass skills they gave you for a reason.

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Aelorean wrote:

Uhmm..Dormex, even if droids were only 1/2 as much as what you posted the equation would be something like: 7 seekers for 3,500 + 1 probe at 1,500 + travel at 1,500 = 6,500. (granted, 500 for seekers is probably not going to happen)

Personally, I was thinking that around 800-900 for seekers and around 1200 for probes would be reasonable considering the bulk amount that will be bought. Using that equation, your mission scenario would be

7 seekers for 6,300 + 1 probe at 1,200 + travel at 1,500 = 9,000

Personally, I think that a 2k loss for exp is acceptable, especially for an elite profession. Do you want to find out ANY idea how much money the droid engineers have lost grinding xp?! I didn't even think that you could make money on SWG until I got blueprints/production 4...I was barely making enough to keep harvesters running, let alone buy anything fun!

I think you guys should give it a few days for DEs to figure out how much they can sell those things for and I think you'll be able to find them for sale for a reasonable amount. Heck, I am even willing to sell at basically the old vendor price for those that are willing to buy 50-100 at a time.

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OK... lets clartify this for those that think I'm a griping BH... I'm not... I'm a DE that would think it should be possible to make money at it... Why is it so important to make us better then another class? Why cant we work together to make BOTH classes better?!?

I admit that the basic formula I used is assuming an Investigation 1 BH... so yes, the numbers PROBABLY get better as you go higher. But from what I keep hearing from BH's, its not THAT much better.

Hey, I'm all for fixing our isseus!! and lets face it DE's have ALOT of issues!.... but... umm.... isnt this one of them?!? We want our droids to sell and be useful.... Seekers are one of the few fully working droids in the game! And it wouldn't be a difficult fix I dont think.

For the record, I'm fully aware of the grind through DE xp (being a low level DE myself... and working the grind daily)... but thats one of our issues too.. and hopefully another thing we might change in the future.

dormax..

for my server your #s are right..and if a solution isnt made then yes it WILL effect DEs..Bhs are dropping invest left and right due to the fact we go broke..and many like myself will wait till this is fixed to continue

so in a sense this becomes a DE issue as well..Good post

and in reply to the one saying they dont see a problem with BH losing money on missions...you cant compare a crafter getting exp to a BH getting exp..NO we shouldnt loose money on missions..do other combat classes like pistoleers or carbineer or riflemen etc..lose money on desstroy missions? NO..Do they gain exp doing it...YES..

Dormax i hope it does get attention and yes it will help both professions out

I have about 50 seeker droids for sale on Bria, at 300 credits each.

How many have I sold?

Lets say greater than negative one and less than positive one.

I am disappointed in the bounty hunters.

Loukee, that is probably because they can't find them. The droids aren't put in the "Droid" section of the Bazaar, but instead in the "Misc" and then the "Generic Item" part.

But I agree it's a crummy situation for Bounty Hunters. I do think they should be dependant on DEs for the droids, but....personally, I prefer the charge-based method. Make each one be usable five times or so. DEs don't notice any different, because it's the same amount of resources to produce.